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Learning Lovers.org 
How I Write Poems
The first poems I wrote as an adult, already working. Here’s one of them:
“I got up early in the morning.
I peeked out the window.
The sky at dawn
Was a little gloomy…” and so on and so forth. In a way, I poured out my impressions and emotions onto the pages of a notebook with loosely rhymed text. Something started to emerge, to take shape (or so it seemed to me). I liked it. And that’s how I got hooked. But I didn’t write often, sometimes not for years. However, I certainly tried and still try to write regularly, even if just a little. After all, what does it take? Time, a place, and a topic—always fresh, like a cucumber—something that no one else has. And then it’s a matter of technique.
Speaking of technique, at first, I had no idea about it for a long time, even years. I wrote intuitively; that’s probably why it was so easy. I didn’t get hung up on unfamiliar rules of verse composition. As they say, “the less you know, the better you sleep.”
Having a certain amount of material, I wanted to know: do my verses have the right to exist? I needed critics. And to avoid completely “fermenting in my own juice,” I had to “go out into the world.” I mean I sought out more knowledgeable people in this regard. I’m grateful to them for the help I expected to receive. For some time, I even had to sit almost at a desk, both literally and figuratively. I needed knowledge about the question I posed for myself.
While studying at school, I hadn’t written poems yet. Therefore, the concepts of rhythm, meter, foot, stanza, and many others passed me by unnoticed. When I forgot what school was like and had already written something, I gradually began to feel the lack of education. It puzzled me: there are art schools for artists, music schools for musicians, but for poets (I didn’t think about prose writers)—nothing.
It was a huge joy and news to learn that there are books on poetry writing, and they were available in our library. I gathered everything that was related to this theme from the literature and began to study it, bit by bit. And, of course, I did manage to learn a thing or two. I started to look at what I had previously written with new eyes. I began to revise. What I could save, I saved. The rest went into the trash.
Soon I noticed: it became harder to write (the quality, like in everything, requires more attention, and therefore, more time). Of course, almost everything has been written about, and there are fewer and fewer themes. I didn’t want to repeat myself if I respected myself. And the main controller is still myself.
So, the fewer themes there are, the more the desire to write remains, and that’s that. It’s like a dependence, almost akin to a drug. I’m hooked, and that’s that. In principle, this makes me only happy. Maybe I’ll write something worthwhile. So, I write little by little.
Practically, the process probably goes similarly for others. The main thing is to start, to latch onto a subject, and then it’s hellish work of creation. The muse only exists in myths. But nothing, persistence and hard work will grind it down. For a poem to be written easily and quickly is a rare occurrence. Usually, you go through so much paper and ink before you get a clean final version; it’s just dreadful.
But then, afterward, you’re happy like a little child, and you’re proud of yourself, as if you’ve made another discovery or achievement. Well, it’s complete moral satisfaction. Then you read it to your family and friends before the euphoria settles, and… it all starts again. You write, you write with breaks for stagnation.
Sometimes, my little verse pops up in the local newspaper. It feels so nice. It’s like I’ve left a trace in the history of my hometown. And truly, nobody is free from vanity. I admit, I’m guilty of that too. After all, if a living person doesn’t want anything, then they are an angel. And an angel has only a reservation for the heavens. There’s nothing you can do about it.
But to become a professional, talent and complete immersion in the field of activity are needed—you must live and breathe it. Otherwise, you’ll remain an amateur, even of a high class. However, everyone has their own path.
Yet one cannot survive on poetry alone. Thus, it turns out that this activity for most poets is indeed a hobby:
“We write poems about love, about parting,
About life, about the Motherland, and everything else.
Why do we do this? Perhaps just out of boredom?
Or maybe we carry culture to the masses…?”
By the way, I’ll add something about the very process of writing. I might reveal a little secret by saying that everything a poet writes is not only their personal experiences, impressions, and biography… It can be anything, any made-up or heard-from-someone stories, just like novelists.
Also, people think that if a work is written, say, in the first person, it’s about the author. But that’s just a literary device, one of many.
Sometimes, no, not sometimes—very often, everything starts with one phrase, one word, one line, and what comes out afterward, the poet doesn’t know yet. Sometimes, the result is such that you’re just astonished, and you wouldn’t even have thought of it, just like that! The poems turn out so touching that you might even get teary-eyed. That means you hit the mark. And readers, meaning the audience, often take it at face value. Apparently, it resonates with their soul. Personally, this only pleases me. Even though it’s not about myself, it’s like, even if I invented everything or almost everything, it feels real. It means that my struggles weren’t in vain.
/Капустин С.М./
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On the Subject of Education
A joyous event arrives for children starting first grade – September 1st. After kindergarten, children feel grown-up; they want to go to school with a briefcase or a backpack and receive straight A’s. But after a month or two of school, many children’s desire fades. Of course, there are exceptions, but those are just exceptions to the rule. Yes, learning is hard. Not everyone finds studying equally easy. Constant lessons, answers at the board, tests, homework—when is there time to play? That wasn’t the case in kindergarten. What will happen next? Yes, to become an adult, you need to study, get an education, and then have a profession, a specialty, ideally more than one. A nightmare!! All you want is to hang out with friends, ride a bike, watch cartoons, play war games, or whatever else is popular now; in short, do nothing. That’s what most children think. They don’t yet know what they will become, but they already don’t want to learn. It’s sad.
In elementary school, they barely learn to read, write, and do arithmetic, but things get much tougher later. Well, a child doesn’t understand English; they’d struggle with Russian. And what’s the difference between a parabola and a hyperbola… and really, why do we need to know this? But physical education – that’s a different story: you can play basketball, volleyball, run around, though many don’t want to, and not everyone can. In short, no matter where you look, ten years is a long time. And then people grow up, born into the world for some unclear reason. Few people know by the end of school what they want to be in life.
Mostly, it’s a herd mentality: everyone is going there, so I’ll go too, it’s close and not too expensive. But heading somewhere alone to apply for college? Yikes, what a nightmare. But there are those who aren’t afraid to detach themselves from their mother’s apron strings, to live away from home for years… From such people, something worthwhile might come, but that’s not a guarantee. What about the others? They don’t have the real knowledge to enroll in prestigious universities like Moscow State University, MGIMO, or VGIK. They simply didn’t study enough or memorize. And so it turns out: there are teachers, there are students, there are textbooks of all kinds, but in the heads of most, there is no knowledge. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?
Maybe we don’t need so many schools and teachers? A few individuals could learn autonomously, geniuses even more so. The main thing is to teach everyone to read and write decently, and that’s good enough. Think of the savings: no need to maintain schools and pay teachers – for what?
And if anyone disagrees with this, let them write new textbooks that are as easy to read as captivating novels, read in one breath and quickly memorized. After all, bestsellers like “The Three Musketeers” and “Treasure Island” don’t require cramming; everything is clear and understandable. Plus, a lot depends on the teacher. Some are appealing to go to, while others you’d never want to see, whether they are too strict or just don’t know their subject. The unclear always frightens us if it remains unclear. Why go to class just to get another failing grade? We start skipping lessons. And when you come home: well, how do you do them? It’s unclear. This is how generations of ignorant people grow up, one after another. But is it their fault? After all, teachers learned from these very same textbooks. Certainly, not everything written in textbooks can be translated into engaging stories, but it’s worth the attempt; what if it works? Then there would be other teachers, and student knowledge would improve significantly. After graduating from school, every student would surely know what they want to be in life without regret. Only with such a change, albeit not immediately, will our country prosper, and our society flourish.
Conclusion: We need such textbooks, and consequently, teachers, so that children genuinely want to rush to school, to learn and gain knowledge, rather than going there as if to their execution. But for now, that’s purely in the realm of fantasy.
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